Heroes Every Child Should Know eBook

THE SIXTH LABOUR—­SHOOTING THE STYMPHALIAN BIRDS

Far in the famed land of Arcadia is a beautiful lake
known so many years ago, as in the time of Hercules,
and even by us in our day, as Lake Stymphalus.
It is a lake of pure sweet water and it lies, as such
waters lie in our own country, high up in mountains
and amid hillsides covered with firs and poplars and
clinging vines and wild blossoms.

In our day the lake is a resort for gentle singing
birds, but in the time of Hercules other birds were
there also. The other birds were water fowls,
and they had gathered at Lake Stymphalus because they
had been driven out of their old home by wolves, who
alone were hungrier and more destructive than they.
These fowls had claws of iron, and every feather of
theirs was sharper than a barbed arrow, and so strong
and fierce and ravenous they were that they would dart
from the air and attack hunters, yea, and pecking them
down would tear and strip their flesh till but a bony
skeleton remained of that which a few minutes before
had been a strong, active, buoyant man seeking in
the chase food for his hearthside.

To make way with this horrid tribe of the air was
the sixth command Eurystheus laid upon Hercules.
Toward Lake Stymphalus therefore turned our hero.
Again he walked Arcadian waysides, and again as he
fared the spring sun shone above, and the birds sang
welcome, and the narcissus lifted its golden cup,
and as he went his heart rejoiced in his life, whatever
the difficulty of his labour, and in the beauty of
the world before his eyes. And as he walked also
he thought of how he should accomplish the great undertaking
upon which he was bent.

While thus deliberating the grey-eyed goddess of wisdom,
Athene, came to him—­just as this goddess
even in our day comes to those who think—­and
she suggested to his mind that he should scare the
fowl from their retreat by brazen rattles. The
goddess did even more than put the notion of using
a rattle in the mind of Hercules. It is said
she actually brought him one, a huge, bronze clapper
made for him by the forger of the gods, limping Hephaestus.

Hercules took this rattle and mounting a neighbouring
height shook it in his great hands till every hill
echoed and the very trees quivered with the horrid
sound. And the man-eating birds? Not one
remained hidden. Each and every one rose terrified
in the air, croaking and working its steely talons
and sharp-pointed feathers in dire fear.

Now from his quiver the hero fast picked his barbed
arrows, and fast he shot and every shot brought to
his feet one of the terrible man-eaters, till at
last he had slain every one. Or, if indeed, any
of the tribe had escaped, they had flown far away,
for never after, in all the long history of Lake Stymphalus,
have such creatures appeared again above its fair
waters.